Landing on his feet
by Dante Stark
Summary: 37 year old Harry Potter's mid-life crisis is coming up. Its a bit more extreme than most. AU
1. Chapter 1

a/n: This is my first ever fic, unbeta-ed so its a bit rough around the edges

* * *

Harry padded his way across the great river, trying to stay afloat as he shifted the weight in his mouth. It was a difficult exercise, breathing through his nose in perfect synch with his tired limbs so as to not drown in the rapidly rushing water.

He reached the bank, his every muscle aching with the wear and tear of the day. He dropped the large snake on the floor, the carcass making a soft thump as it fell. It was about 16 feet long, green scales glistening in the dying sun. Harry shook himself off, yellow-orange fur bristling as the water was propelled clean off it. He then morphed back into human form. An average sized, middle aged but handsome man stood in place, emerald green eyes shining in the orange sun, tanned skin covering muscled forearms, chest and body. He wore simple old boots, short and ragged jeans and a button up white shirt with a pocket on the side.

The snake had provided a very good challenge, Jaguars and Anacondas where very well matched and in the water the advantages weighed heavily towards the reptile. Harry hadn't let the odds deter him from jumping this one the moment he saw it. Though sport wasn't the only reason he had gone after it; the locals had a few recipes that could turn this snake into two weeks worth of semi-gourmet food. His expedition of the Amazonian basin was almost over, the local tribes had proven to be slightly more productive in knowledge of soul magic than the Mayan tombs he had raided last month, though they didn't hold a candle to the latter's awesome library of ritual magic.

This was his life, traveling around the world, learning anything and everything that dealt with magic by any means necessary. He had laid a metaphorical path of destruction that spanned the entire globe, from ancient library to ancient library, from temple to temple, from tomb to tomb, from secret hidden magical community to secret hidden magical community. He had begun this impossible journey Seventeen years ago, his only companionship coming in the way of the random women he regularly bedded. He kept other human contact to a minimum, spending most of his time not learning in his animagus form.

Harry remembered a time when magic had been nothing but a toy to him, when he and Ron would joke around in the common room while Hermione nagged them about school work, when he barely tried in class; preferring to think about worthless things like quidditch. He hated remembering those times. If only he'd been half as prepared as he was now, maybe he could have saved them.

He almost slapped himself, it was not worth it thinking about past times. Instead he reflected on the fact that it was very nice to not have to use warming or disillusionment charms while hunting, as was the case when he was scouring eastern Europe and northern Asia. Besides, its not like studying would have changed shit, I could have studied my ass off but Voldemort would still have a few decades worth of experience and knowledge over me. He had developed a love for wild nature: murky water, large overgrown weeds, rotting trunks. Dumbledore knew it was worthless, training a child to do a wizards job. he tried to set it up so that all I'd have to do was not fuck up and the day would be saved with few casualties. Needless to say I fucked up. He didn't like the humidity though, and the candiru, fuck the candiru.

Harry rubbed a finger to his temples, looking into his worn bag for the ingredients he'd need to make dinner out of a dead snake. He set up a few quick privacy and general repelling wards, feeling too tired to fight other predators for his kill. He was in a small clearing a few yards off the river bank, though the foliage was so thick around him that a normal person would have been hard pressed to find the river. Once he had all the needed ingredients he concentrated slightly and watched as the tip of his wand burned a dull burgundy color, humming slightly. With practiced ease he drew a single rune on the floor  
with his wand. Once the slight angular rune was finished, Harry lifted his wand for a second, the glow on the tip changing to a light blue, and tapped the middle of the rune, which immediately flamed up.

Controlled fiendfyre, this was the most you could get without losing command over it. Harry watched dispassionately as miniature beasts of all sorts tried futilely to escape their entrapments. This powerful magical fire was very destructive, the rune he had just draw being a very common triggered trap in Egyptian pyramids, but a powerful wizard could have a small degree of control over it, turning it into an ideal cooking fire. He knew it was unnecessary, the taste of cooked snake wouldn't be that different in a regular fire compared to fiendfyre, but Harry had developed a love, almost dependency on runes. He trusted runes more than wand magic, feeling that they where more permanent. That's not to say he didn't bother with other branches, he was very much experienced in almost every field of magic and could probably earn his mastery in all of them if he ever decided to return to England, though with all that he knew he still wasn't close to the power either Voldemort or Dumbledore had held. He had long ago reconciled himself with the fact that if he wanted to be as powerful as they had been, he'd need to do it exactly like they had done: through decades of hard work.

Of course, it had taken Voldemort twenty odd years to reach his full power, but he was helped by the shortcuts of horribly deforming dark rituals that sped up his development. Harry hadn't chosen the same path for two reasons: first; dark rituals, at least the ones Voldemort had performed, messed with the mind, giving power while taking sanity. Second; while Voldemort had surpassed Dumbledore in power, the duel at the ministry had proven that the old man's weathered skill was superior. This was not to say Harry hadn't taken a few shortcuts, he had performed a few rituals to enhance his abilities. One which heightened his senses (this one was a double edged sword at the beginning, as he would get a migraine from hearing a pin drop and the smell of dirty socks was enough for him to pass out, but he gradually learned to dull them when not needed), another to augment his strength and resistance and a third very painful ritual to allow him to speak, hear, read and write in most human and magical languages (it did not give him back his parseltongue ability, not that he cared).

He levitated dinner over the Fire, concentrating to make sure it didn't engulf the snake and instead cooked it. With a second wand he animated a small mortar to prepare the ingredients, herbs and spices being grinded by the pestle. This was a weird meal for him, as he either ate vegetables and rice as a human or raw meat as a Jaguar, but anaconda was just something he had to try as he was sure that not even man of the people who lived around this area had ever eaten it, most of them preferring monkey meat, which took very long to chew and gave off the effect of fullness much quicker than other meats.

The stars twinkled brightly in the night sky; unseen by many of its residents blinded by the cover of the trees, but clearly visible to tree dwellers: birds, monkeys and a huge cat. Harry rested on a heavy branch, he'd move at dawn, quickly as he was trespassing in another cats territory, and find the last of the tribes he'd visit. He was not very hopeful that they'd provide something new, but it was worth a shot. After that, his long journey would be over. He didn't know what he'd do after that, and he didn't want to think about it until the last possible moment.

* * *

Early morning found Harry once again braving the mighty river, though this time in a makeshift raft. The last village's Shaman had told him that this tribe lived in an island, separated from contact with other tribes. Harry had been traveling for a week and now the ocean was close by as the magically enhanced raft rode the river, reaching the southernmost part of its mouth. Soon he found himself in open sea. With the rough coordinates he got from the old priest he very quickly felt a strong air of magic which denoted the existence of a completely magical community. Harry was slightly shocked by this, as in all of his travels through the Amazon most magical beings lived in tribes with muggles, none of them having more than two wizards in one group. To find a Hogsmead or Tical here was unexpected. As he directed the raft into the island he jumped off and quickly vanished the conjured device away.

The beach was clean, maybe 3 yards of sand before his vision was engulfed by green and brown. Harry quickly shifted into his animagus form, entering the thick forest with a cautiousness inherent to his kind. The enhanced senses worked wonders here, adding to his already advanced animal senses to give him very sensitive alarms. He ignored the breaking of a twig, his instincts telling him that it was caused by a rather rotund Tapir. The rustling of the leaves was dismissed as a traveling Capuchin monkey. The whizzing sound of an approaching arrow was--FUCK!

Harry dived to the side as a red tipped arrow embedded itself on a tree. He smelled the aroma of some kind frog, which meant the arrow was probably poison tipped. He ran to the left as three more arrows narrowly missed him. He quickly sprang into action, shifting into human form, his wand raised in the air. An arrow was stopped in midair and thrown in the path of another, splitting them both down the middle. With cat like speed Harry drew a circle around him, swiftly drawing patterns inside it before tapping his foot in the middle. Immediately, an arrow headed towards him was stopped, turned around and sent back on its tracks. Harry could hear a surprised gasp as the person surely tried to dodge, futile as the ward caused the arrows to zone in on the closest magical human it could find. He soon heard another shriek, this one of pain, as the person was hit. He waited a few seconds, expecting more arrows to come his way, but was disconcerted when there was no new attack. It was deathly silent, but his senses again proved useful as he picked up a low murmur coming from whence the arrow had struck. it was maybe 5-6 voices, female. As he listened to the voices he diligently exited the circle, casting silencing and disillusionment charms over himself. At a brisk pace he walked closer to the murmurs, wand at the ready as he conjured a dagger for his left hand, second wand ready if needed on his shirt pocket (he'd rigged it to work as a wand holster with anti-summoning charms and the like), his bag swaying slightly as he walked. As He got close enough that he had to dull his hearing he was met with a breathtaking sight.

Five women, four of them conferring over the injured girl, where looking worriedly. They where all very beautiful, shoulder length silky black hair falling on mocha skin and big dark eyes. They where also tall, as tall as him, and had well proportioned bodies, a toga-like robe fitting tight against their bodies and leaving one breast uncovered. They where a perfect picture of beauty, and as Harry sensed a weird magic permeate the air around him he guessed that they where probably some south American variant of Veela. He raised his occlumency shields and canceled the charms on himself. Sweeping his wand in a semicircle he silently disarmed them of their many weapons, springing in on them before they could act and stunning the four standing women, animating the surrounding tree vines and using them to tie the women up. He pointed his wand at the injured one and spoke:

"Who are you and why did you attack me?"- He asked

She was breathing heavily, the poison very strong, but Harry wouldn't heal her, it was better when they where hurt as they where more talkative.

"I will not tell you anything, male" she said defiantly

"Too bad, I've got this nice little antidote here that I'm afraid I'm just going to have to throw away" He said, pulling out of his bag a phial of clear liquid, hallucinogenous tree sap, but she didn't need to know that.

"You lie" She was sweating heavily, death was probably only a few heartbeats away. His Veela theory was confirmed as she tried to entice him with tendrils of seductive magic which he shunned away.

"Your tricks wont work on me" he said "Now answer my questions or I'll leave you and your friends to die, I'm sure the ants would enjoy the free meal" Ants would be the least of their creature worries if he left them here.

She still did not speak, though her beautiful features where shaking in barely concealed pain and fear. Harry sighed before going to work, performing legimency on her.

On the forefront of her weakened mind was her impending death, he quickly set aside these thoughts and looked for what should be number two on her what-to-think list; what not to tell him. Her mind was like an open book as he learned of her people, the more he knew the less intrigued he became.

Apparently he had stumbled upon the famed women of the Amazon, a society of powerful magical women who despised men; using them only for breeding purposes and quickly killing them. Whilst they where very much magical, they like the European veela only used their powers for seduction and primitive battle magic, giving them extra skill when fighting and making them very fierce warriors. Apparently these where beginners, young teenage girls barely trained. This girl in particular was the youngest of the group, named Amalinalli, daughter of queen Kiliwa. After thoroughly searching her mind for something else, a shrine, powerful magical object, mythical super-powerful beast, Harry withdrew from her mind. These people had nothing to offer him.

He reached for where the arrow was stuck in her thigh and pulled it out, not reacting to her pain filled moans. He went to work as he pulled out an actual antidote from his bag, forcing it down her throat without much opposition (by now she was almost passed out) he quickly healed the wound on her thigh and stepped back.

As she came to Harry released the other girls from their bindings but didn't enneverate them. As Amalinalli shook the last of grogginess off herself, Harry spoke:

"Now listen up, I will leave this island and never come back, you wake up your friends and go back to your village, mention this to no one. This place holds nothing of interest for me-" He paused, looking her up and down "-well, maybe one thing" He grinned at her horrified look, he wasn't a sadistic bastard, but lack of proper human contact outside of philosophical ramblings with old men made him a bit rusty on the rules of common courtesy.

As he was about to make some particularly funny quip he'd been saving up, he heard the renewed sound of a whizzing arrow, and he ducked to the floor as a branch was impaled, barely missing the now fleeing hummingbird. Cursing under his breath he turned around and ran towards the beach. He easily dodged more arrows headed his way, though he didn't have enough breathing room to shift into his animagus form. Creating a fire whip, he spun in a circle, cutting across the trees around him and causing them to fall. A chain reaction came soon after which cleared a good 60 yard area around him. He waited, seeing at the corner of his eye the inviting sea.

The destruction of a chunk of forest seemed to anger them, As a hail of arrows almost blotted out the sun. Harry simply flicked his wand, only to find that these arrows where not so easily cast away. He frowned slightly as he twirled his wand, a quickly conjured muggle sprinkler sprayed the sky with purple-blue flames, burning through the arrows and surrounding trees like knife through butter, Harry himself was protected under a nice stone umbrella. After a minute he vanished the sprinkler, and beheld his work. Trees all around him where burning down, fire spreading, he could see figures moving frantically in the background, trying to douse the growing inferno. He started walking towards the beach, when he had to dodge yet again, this time a punch.

A very tall woman stood in front of him. If it weren't for her great beauty and the lack of bulk in her features, he would have thought her a giantess. Of course she was way too short to be a giant, though her 6 feet 5 inches where still very imposing. Harry's eyes widened as she pulled out a spear and he raised his wand, sending a pair of bludgeoning curses which she batted away with the magically enhanced stick. She expertly swung it, swatting aside any offensive spell he tried to get in as she attempted to rip his guts out. He got caught many times, his though skin making would be gashes into grazes. His inexperience with non-magical battle showed as she whacked him across the back with her spear, causing him to lose his breath and almost release the grip on his wand. Harry regrouped, spraying a thick mist at the Amazon; she sniffed at the air, confused, until every animal in the area, having run for cover, came back and savagely jumped her. Ants, snakes, beetles, deer, margay, howler monkeys, parrots of all sorts and every other creature in the area mounted o the large woman. Harry took this distraction to prepare his real attack.

Finding a shallow cut across his stomach, he plunged his wand into it, wincing slightly as he deepened the wound. As he pulled his wand out he growled as he realized that his bag and all its contents had been battered beyond use. With the blood tipped wand he Swished his wand in the air, concentrating heavily while incanting in the language of the Haitian voodoo priests. The blood red rune written in the air in front of him glowed even whilst he was drawing it, sending low level curses at the Amazon with his second wand. Just as she swatted the last of the large animals away from her and the smaller one left due to weakening spell, Harry had finished his rune, jabbing his wand forward and through the rune.

There was a burst of light coming from the oblong shaped rune, Harry closed his eyes as he was blinded, until the light subsided and in front of him there sat a figure. With long crooked claws, ugly face and large dark wings a stone gargoyle sprang to life, 6 feet tall and with empty white eyes, leaving behind a still glowing rune. The Amazon looked amazed at the display of magic, but once she saw the gargoyle her posture changed to one of battle. Raising her spear she waited as it flew towards he before taking a powerful swing of her spear with her mighty arms, only to have the spear bend, vibrations running up to her palms, making her almost drop the spear. The gargoyle took a swipe with its claws, drawing blood from her face as she tried grabbing it over the head, only for it to twist her arm with demon like speed.

Harry released the breath he had been holding. That had been a bit of a fusion, mixing ancient European gargoyles with Haitian summoning magic. The gargoyle was a mindless drone, pitted against a specific enemy it could wreak havoc like no other, being indestructible by any magical means.

That last part was only a half-truth, it was destructible by very simple magical mean- you just had to disrupt the rune. Of course, not many people thought about it, especially when they where being attacked by a vicious demon.

Harry began healing the wound on his left arm, relishing in the pain filled scream the Amazon emitted as the gargoyle ripped off the flesh in her right leg, when out of the corner of his eyes he saw something brown approaching. He started as he saw the flying monkey, headed straight for his rune! He raised his wand, a spell on his mind, but the monkey had been thrown too fast. Harry could only view horrified as the shrieking ball of hair collided with his rune, electrocuting itself and, more importantly, disrupting the rune.

The split second was all that was needed for Harry's wonderful piece of magic to implode, the gargoyle turning into a mountain of rubble.

Anger swelled up inside of him. No one fucked with his runes. As the tip of his wand burned an ugly red, he pointed his wand at the beaten Amazon, unleashing a ball of fire twice her size that engulfed her- a constant stream of fire coming from Harry's wand, burning through the foliage and clearing a path to the beach, leaving all in its wake dead.

As Harry's anger subsided, his breathing calmed down and he dropped his wand, which was burning his fingers. He clenched and unclenched his hands, snapping his second wand in half. Harry didn't care, he needed to regroup after that outburst, too much time spent with only magic had made him a bit too unstable.

As he took the first of what he hoped to be many brisk steps towards the beach, he fell unconscious as something huge clubbed him over the back of the head.

* * *

Harry felt a searing pain threaten to tear his skull apart as he came to. He was about to ignore the death threat being sent to him by his brain until he saw it was written in red ink, drops of blood trickling down the side of his field of vision. He tried to rub his scalp to temper the pain only to find his hands tied behind his back. He looked down to find himself naked

"Curse Latin women and their weird turn ons" He said, sadly realizing that there was no one there to nervously chuckle at his joke. He really needed a sidekick, maybe a flying monkey would lighten his life up.

As he took notice of his surroundings he saw he was in a huge boulder, From the sounds of the waves behind him he deduced that it was facing the sea, probably a cliff-face, and that the fall was fairly high. A thick pole was protruding from the middle of the rock, ten feet high. Attached to five feet an 10 vertical inches of that pole was himself, tightly bound to it by very heavy ropes. His arms tied behind the pole, his feet only a few inches off the ground also tied at the ankles. Shifting into animagus form would be dangerous, he was sure that the ropes would not give way when his wrists thickened.

As he contemplated the pros and cons of lubricating the ropes on his feet with urine, a large congregation of the Amazons walked up to him, wild chatter disturbing the soothing sound of the crashing waves as numerous accusing glares where cast his way.

as the group settled ten yards in front of him, one in the pack walked up to the front. Harry had to catch his breath, even in such a dire situation he could admire beauty, and this lady had it in spades. The regal air she held around herself and the light golden colored robes flaring with a mystifying aura. She was not taller than the woman he had fought, to she was still taller than him by a good 4 inches, but there was no mistake that she was the queen of the Amazon.

"Male" She spat at him with disgust. Harry noticed that she was speaking to him in Spanish instead of her native tongue, a translator relaying every word to the angry mob "You have trespassed into MY island, the peaceful utopia of Amazonia, you maim my daughter, destroy my forest and KILL my sister-" fuck"-you have single handedly proven in a few hours why the male species should be wiped off the face of the earth" she paused, waiting for the translator to finish the retelling and for the crowd to get riled up.

"Give me one good reason why I should kill you swiftly, instead of slowly and painfully, like I plan to do" She said, he delicate hand forcefully grabbing his jaw and lining his sight with hers. She looked so cute, incensed like that.

Harry thought quickly, skipping "could you at least use me for mating first" he decided on the much more tactful "You should let me be because- " he paused, waiting until the translator finished talking "- I SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE!" he yelled in the tongue he had previously conversed with the princess.

There where immediate gasps from the crowd of onlookers. A male speaking the sacred Amazon language was inconceivable.

"Impossible!" The queen yelled in his face, sexy drops of spit coating his eyes and nose.

"It is true mother!" came the voice of the princess, her name started with an A, who was red in the face. "He spoke to me as if he had been raised in the Amazon"

"You told me he attacked you!" She turned, waving an accusing finger at her daughter.

"H-he d-did" She stuttered "But afterwards he spoke to me, and he healed my wounds!" Nice of the little bint to come to his rescue now "W-we saw him enter the island, at first we where going to capture him but when we saw him turn into the spotted beast we panicked" she said with a shuddering breath

Mentions of a spotted beast seemed to stop all movement, as the older women's eyes widened. The queen looked at Harry as if he was some sort of demon, and she seemed to be having a hard time staying on her feet.

Harry gulped, his hopes of release, or at least pre-death orgy, crushed as all eyes where on him. "Is that a bad thing?"

* * *

Harry had always preferred the green grapes. Ron and Hermione had thought it was because green was his favorite color, what with the eyes and all, but it was actually because they where seedless. Of course there where seedless purple grapes, but he always associated that with unnatural bioengineering evils.

Right now though, watching as the six foot eight woman spit four seeds, one after the other, about halfway across the island before feeding them to his lounging form, he had to admit the purple ones had their advantages.

Harry had never been one for hedonism, since his days of hard work in his relatives house to running around the country barely escaping the dark lord to running around the world sleeping in trees, he never had any time to bask in luxury and he never felt the need to. Now though, he felt like he could give himself a little break from all the rough living, after all it wasn't everyday a vicious society of beautiful man killing women worshipped you as a god.

Harry had time to idly notice that the girl with the A name needed more work on her tongue skills, he'd need to schedule more training sessions with her mother. The tag team mud wrestling league seemed to be coming along nicely. Of course, it wasn't all fun and games, he had godly duties to fulfill (which the queen ever so kindly filled him in on), duties that mostly involved activities of the carnal variety, all very rigorous and tiring work that he performed with a smile.

He was lazing in his chair, twirling his wand in his fingers, he would never abandon magic, his one true love, and he was constantly frustrated as he tried teaching these beasts the finer of the magical arts. You'd think that after getting a blowjob down pat, Slavic rune patterns would be a piece of cake. He was contemplating changing the curriculum to more druid alleys to see if they picked anything up when the arrival of the queen was announced by a wet kiss on the tip of his member, the formal introduction he had introduced.

"Mighty lord Hattiangdi, spotted god and protector of Amazonia, you are needed to fulfill your duties" She said in an exited tone

Harry jumped off his chair, excited to complete a days honest work.

"You'll need to be without your effects for this" She said, Harry understood, removing his toga and handing her his wand.

He expected the queen to lead him to one of the girls huts, or maybe to the river where the older women spent their day. He didn't expect for her to take him into a large clearing in the forest, a circular area devoid of even the smallest of grass with an irregularly shaped hole at one of its edges, the left side for Harry.

"um, I've never been here" Harry said, thinking it odd that he'd never been to such a particular spot in a small island.

"Its because its never been here before, until today" She said "The prophesy is ready to be fulfilled, the man-god must perform the ultimate sacrifice so that the women of Amazonia can overcome all their enemies"

She had him at prophesy, as he turned tail and ran as far as he could, which wasn't much when you bumped into a pair of the bigger females in the island, almost reaching seven feet.

Harry scrambled up, only for each of them to grab him by either side. He could see the whole island convening to see this event, they where going to execute him, though this time they gazed at him with love in their eyes. Harry twisted and turned, trying to use his enhanced strength for some leeway to no avail. As queen what's-her-name ignited a controlled fiendfire around the hole in the clearing, Harry realized with a sinking feeling that they had learned something from his lessons after all.

As two more huge women walked up to him, each holding one of his legs as the first two shifted to hold his arms, he watched in horror as the same mouths that had helped fulfill his godly duties now happily incanted his death. The entire island started chanting in gibberish as the queen painted drawings, first around his chest, then his thighs, legs, back and face. Sniffing the air Harry realized it was Jaguar blood. The girl with the A name stepped up, as Harry remembered that she was also the queens daughter, and his eyes almost popped out of their sockets as she drew a type of dagger he knew very well. The next few minutes where agony as Amalinalli traced the runes her mother had drawn with the dagger, taking painstaking attention to detail as she made sure the cuts where deep, like the ritual called for.

They proceeded to chant for a while longer, 4 hours or so, until the blood in Harry's wounds had dried off and was starting to scab rapidly (effect of endurance ritual) as a groggy and tired Harry woke up in the middle of a circle, he only had enough time to read a rune that spelled trouble before he succumbed to immense pain.

He choked, trying to bite his mouth shut, but magic did its job, and soon the queen had one human heart for the feasting. As she handed the delicacy over for the roasting, she whispered for the others to prepare Harry's final part in the ritual.

As he lay there, battered and dying, his subconscious could only comment on the nice and sexy way their breasts swayed even as they threw him over the pit, fiendfire feasting on his skin as he fell into darkness.

* * *

A/N: I deliberately Mel Gibsoned the whole sacrife thing. The fic started off more serious than this but I decided it'd take a light turn right in the middle.


	2. 9 lives

Harry opened his eyes. He stretched, yawning lightly as he scratched his head. He went to lick the back of his palm when he realized he wasn't a Jaguar. _Oh right, I sleep differently now. _He blindly felt the space to his left, confused when he was confronted with cold hard soil where soft milky breasts should have been. _lets see, I was sitting in my throne room, the queen came in and- OH SHIT!_

Harry frantically patted himself down, expecting to sink his fingers into deep ugly gashes, only to come across nothing but smooth skin. _The fuck?_. He looked down at himself, his body looked exactly like it had before the sacrifice, no wounds, no paint. He put his right hand to the left side of his chest, only to feel his bored heart beating away its sorrows. He looked around himself, trying to see some sort of landmark he'd remember in this godforsaken island, but he only found the same trees and bushes that could be found in any other indescript spot.

"Maybe I'm dead" he thought out loud, it wouldn't surprise him, after all he'd gone through that two of his biggest vices (women and runes) would come back to bite him in the ass.

He though back to the ritual, now that he wasn't being the sacrificial lamb he could view it objectively. It had been nasty, sure, but standard fare for these secluded magical communities, he had witnessed worse stuff (The Chinese had one that involved the exchange of vital organs with a spork and much bathing in bodily fluids). What concerned him was the glimpse of the rune he had seen, it was a very common one in this region of the world. The _Uicu _rune was a very versatile little ditty which dealt with matters of the soul, mostly converting it into something magically tangible so that it can be affected by physical means. An older, more rustic version of this rune is involved in the horcrux creation process.

What that rune meant as part of a human sacrifice was that his soul was converted into something as physical, at least to magical stimulation, as skin and bones, meaning that right now his soul should have either been feasted upon by the great Amazonian gods, or become one with magic, its particles being spread across the earth, being called upon by magic to join other unused particles when a wizard needed to conjure a nice pair of pink panties.

Basically, right now he should by all means be non-existent. He doubted this was the afterlife, as his afterlife would include more loose women and useless semantics arguments on the differences between the black arts and the dark arts, and less shitty death forest.

He decided that he'd get the fuck out of this island before further contemplating the improbability of his existence . Of course remembering that he was completely naked and didn't have a wand, he figured that he'd have to get ready to swim (this area, similar to the Bermuda triangle, seemed to have some freaky ambient magic, one of its side effects being very limited apparition range). He changed into Jaguar form and silently but swiftly strode towards where he heard and smelled the beach to be. He took to the tree tops, hoping to not get noticed by any of the amazons, he didn't offer a second look to all the quirkily colored birds monkeys that screeched at his approach _Oh yeah that sure won't call the Amazon's attention _he thought as he decided to take his march to lower ground.

He reached the beach! His planned celebration dance was cut short as he saw something approaching. It was extremely close, too close, so he tried dulling his enhanced vision. Seconds later he saw that the unidentified object was maybe five minutes away from the island. taking to the shadows of the trees closest to the sand and re-enhancing his vision he saw to his shock a wooden raft, moving at such speed that magic had to be involved. The raft wasn't similar to the one he made when reaching the island, it was an exact replica. Thinking he might have been thrown back in time and was going to meet himself, he focused his vision to get as close a look as he could on the rapidly moving raft.

Inside sat, cross legged, an average sized man, tanned skin a slightly darker shade than Harry's, full black beard making him look slightly wild. He had a button-less black shirt without any pockets, long and well cared for Dockers and very elaborate dress shoes. Whilst his shoes and pants looked very formal, the plain shirt and unkempt beard made him look like a vagabond.

In minutes the man reached shore, Harry noticed that there where many - _things- _crawling around his beard. He took a few steps towards the forest and Harry, seeing the wand stashed loosely on his waist, immediately pounced.

The man saw him and elegantly sidestepped. Harry landed and turned faster than the eye could see, his feet ready to spring him towards the stocky stranger. Looking into his eyes, Harry was surprised to see joy in them.

"Oh, hello my dear friend" He said in a jolly voice

"poor fellow, you must be hungry, what with the pouncing on me and all" He had a large grin, the movement of his mouth causing the many creatures in his beard to scurry around.

"What if we make a deal, I'll give you some healthy organic food and you bond yourself to me, like all my other animal friends" as he said this there was a sudden shifting behind him and out popped a variety of animals, different colored and sized fish raising their heads above the water. Most of these animals could be found in the Amazon, but Harry noticed in the large gathering (that for some reason seemed to fit into only a few feet land) many beasts not from this part of the world, particularly an Elk and a Lioness that was giving him a very peculiar wink (weird, when he toured Africa a lioness spotted him in Jaguar form and he had to promptly turn into human form and apparate away before being viciously killed). The creatures on his beard he noticed, to his disgust, where bugs, very ugly and sinister looking bugs. All of them, fish, predators, herbivores, birds et al had one thing in common, one very creepy thing in common, they had wide smiles and blank eyes, even those without eyes or mouths seemed to transmit this look.

"Here kitty kitty" He said good naturedly. There wasn't a sign of malice in his voice, witch made it all the more scary.

"It'll only hurt a lot for a few months, and then we'll ALL be closer to sister earth and mother and father magic. We'll all be one big happy family" He had his wand in his hand in seconds, Harry being mesmerized into a stupor by the mans tone of voice. Once he saw the wand though he was brought back to speed, jumping high into the air to avoid a jet of red magic.

Harry turned into human form and, with the small amount of wandless magic he could command, pushed the man away towards the tree. The shocked man was swept off his feet and would have surely gotten an ugly tree shaped bruise on the back of his head had he not turned mid air, landing on the tree with his feet parallel to the ground. He stood there, defying gravity, for a few seconds before he was forced to roll forward, ending up kneeling on one leg.

"You're not an animal friend!" He shouted accusingly "Mama magic told me about you, You're the devil, disguised as good to seduce the rightcheous man away from his journey, but you wont take me EVIL DEMON!"

As he said this, he thrust his wand forward, causing the many animals witch had disappeared into the unknown once again burst out of thin air, all charging at him at once.

Harry didn't need any more incentive to leave the island, and quickly ran to the boat, disconcerted when many of the fish- most notably the FUCKING CANDIRU- snapped at him, trying to sink the thankfully sturdy boat.

It wasn't long before the arrows started to fly, and Harry saw as the amazons entered the melee. He took advantage of the bearded fuck's slight distraction and, using the limits of his wandless magic, pulled the mans wand towards himself. Catching it in the air, he didn't allow any sort of moment of triumph as the wand accepted him (grateful, it seemed to be) before he cast the propulsion charm, sending him back to the rivers mouth with a burst of speed. He took enjoyment in blasting away any of the fish stupid enough to mess with him, and very soon there was a trail of fried fish leading across half a mile.

As Harry jumped off the raft and kissed the ground on one side of the rivers mouth, he didn't know that he had just exited the frying pan and there was a very nice and inviting fire just waiting for him to jump in.

* * *

"Jump in, the lavas fine!"

Harry Sighed as he heard those words, the people of this village where your standard tribe, though they had on peculiarity.

The people around here where seen as savages by the rest of the world, just like the Africans, superstitious troglodytes who had a backward view of the world. This was kinda true, but for the most part they where more sophisticated than most other magical or muggle societies, more in tune to magic and nature than other more advanced societies.

Of course, all those good things didn't stop them from doing stupid bullshit like jumping into volcanoes like they where public swimming pools. A complicated piece of priestly magic made it possible for the indigenous people of Costa Rica to frolic in the fiery pits of the Arenal Volcano , and activity said to bring forth spiritual cleansing and great fortitude of the mind.

This had Harry worried though. The grand occasion took place once every twenty years, Harry had been able to join in before, _months _before the sacrifice incident.

He had decided that he'd either been thrown back or forward in time shortly before arriving, something's that where supposed to be there weren't. When he reached the north-western part of Costa Rica he had expected some sort of confirmation either way (the costa Rican people where some of the few he had bothered to remember the names and appearances of). What he found left him more confused, Otuke, the soon to be leader of the tribe, was indeed a young boy, but when Harry asked for his brother Warionex, he found after many solemn looks and angry glares that he had been killed by a rather vicious pack of Nifflers, attracted to his shiny medallion.

It was with this information that Harry Potter knew he had done a lateral, traveling not only across time, but across worlds.

* * *

The knowledge had driven Harry into a frenzy, he quickly traveled upwards, to the United States. In his travels he tried to gather as much information as he could on the current state of the English Isles, breaking custom and sticking to the more formal wizarding governments in each country.

He could only pick up tidbits of information, they obviously reciprocated the English Wizarding worlds 'I don't give a fuck about you" policy. What he could piece together was that Voldemort was out and about, Dumbledore was headmaster and Donald Chumsworth of the department of magical cooperation had paid a few hookers on his last swing by.

He reached the U.S., not bothering to stay long in this wasteland of magical study as he reached Fortworth, Dallas. Sneaking into a muggle airplane with surprising difficulty (magic and electronics made for a kooky experience, not helped by the fact that he had never been to an airport, the Dursleys leaving him with Mrs. Figg on their one and only flight) and taking the 7:45 (9:33) to London, with a stop in New York.

* * *

The name Otuke was taken from Ramón Emeterio Betance's book "Los dos indios". Warionex was a Puerto Rican Cacique.

This was a transitional chapter, next chapter should be longer and get into the real story.

Hopefully I'll update in a few days, depending on my workload (last week was very heavy).


	3. chapter 3

Harry closed the door behind him, the last one of them walking away briskly, trying as best as she could to fix her disheveled appearance. He allowed himself a small smirk of victory as his pores wheezed, desperate for air. Harry couldn't blame them, it had been a tad bit cramped, but it was the best he could do with the setting he was currently in.

There was a slight lurch, a pack of crackers on a steel table a few feet away from him fell to the floor, Harry picked it up and pocketed it. He was hungry, but he'd have to wait until he could find some cheese. He could have summoned said cheese (food could not be conjured, but you could summon it if you knew were it was, and Harry was pretty sure Rome had some cheddar somewhere), but he wouldn't risk the plane crashing or blowing up or turning into a turnip.

His wand was currently stowed away in a suitcase, several layers of shopping bag reinforced with old t-shirts separating it from the rest of the empty case, which had been cleared of all electronic items almost the moment it had been acquired.

Harry sat down on his seat, putting the safety belt on and returning to his crossword puzzle, he'd only been able to answer one as of now (number 5, across). He was surprised he had even been able to fill that one out, his incomplete muggle education dictating that he should be an ignorant fuck of all things not dealing with magic.

"I tell you, I've seen men do one, heck I've seen a man do two, but all four at once!" Whispered a verily impressed old man, he had been annoying Harry with stories alternating between his favorite granddaughter, whom Harry would obviously love to meet (she was half his age, not to mention fat, as proven by legilimency) and his soon to be finished thesis on jellyfish reproduction.

He was bald, tufts of gray hair on the sides and back; he had round glasses and a fat, egg shaped head. He was slightly overweight, with yellowing misshapen teeth; he had been sipping on a can of coke for the past hour or so.

"I remember when I was a lad, handsome bugger I was," He said with a faraway look in his eyes, yellow teeth glowing under the light of the small reading light.

"Very wild those times were. The country was at war, so there was no one bothering' to enforce the rules, had people with multiple partners, shagging cousins, sodomizing each other. Why I remember I lost my virginity when I was eight years old, looked like a mule that woman did, yelled like one too, come to think of it, she was quite hairy, and she had a very tail-like behind, and..."

Harry decided now was the time to turn him off, as the old man began to reminisce, stowing the still half-full can in his pocket. Harry ignored the dark looks sent his way; many people had been buzzing the assist button for maybe 30 minutes, none of the four stewardesses being available to assist.

" Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking, we will be landing in London Heathrow Airport in approximately 20 minutes, local time 5:20 P.M. After we land one Mr. Will Sexton and one Mr. Heathrow Bridges are to be taken to airport security for questioning"

Harry hid a snort; he had devised a simple plan so that Will Sexton would never set foot on the landing dock. He wondered why the old man, who seemed to have stiffened slightly, would be in trouble.

He looked out the window over the shoulder of the now heavily breathing old man. The clouds were very... white. He mused that for all his broomstick devotion when he was younger he'd never flown inside a cloud, he'd need to change that soon.

It would definitely relieve the stress of getting to England. He had ruled out international portkey; he wanted to get into the country in a non-magical way as an international portkey, illegal one at that, would have been sensed and investigated by the important people. Besides, airplane travel was probably much more comfy than the horrid gut-wrenching feeling of portkey. The horrible films, food and magazines had almost made him yearn for the innards-ripped-out sensation of portkey travel, if it hadn't been for the great service.

Once he'd found the airport, he'd figured it'd be a thing of sneaking on the plane and that'd be it. His first plan had been just that, disillusioning himself and following a random traveler around. It worked perfectly (not counting the many burnt out televisions and radios he left in his wake) until he reached the metal detector. He didn't have any metal on him, so he waltzed through without any thought.

The machine sent off an array of sparks before blowing up and injuring five people, canceling all outgoing flights in that area of the airport.

He then tried out a simpler plan, apparating straight into the plane. Thankfully he disapparated out of the plane quickly enough to survive the explosion with only a few minor scratches.

Coming in with the baggage worked long enough until it had to go through the x-ray machine (He'd thought only the handbags went through that tosh), and disguising himself as a rich (obliviated) man's pet exotic feline worked long enough until airport staff said he needed to be neutered to go on the flight.

In the end, he prevailed over the technological beast as he stunned a dude outside of the airport, stole his passport (and gave him a good mind rape to find the needed information) and went to a nice man who got his picture on the passport for a reasonable price (reasonable to Harry because he could just conjure the cash). Two weeks later, 40 year old Will Sexton was returning to his wife and kids after visiting his parents in Austin.

The plane landed, people applauding as the captain warned them to keep their seatbelts on until they'd stopped completely. As people stood up and reached for their overhead luggage, Harry noted amusedly that the annoying old man was pale and sweaty.

As the doors opened, two bulky men in black jackets came in, glaring mostly at the old man, Harry noticed. People seemed to be intimidated, sitting back down and looking at their laps until the men passed them, when they swiveled around on their seats and waited for the action.

Harry decided this was the perfect moment to take his leave. He stood up.

"Gentlemen" He nodded curtly to the thugs, who didn't seem to be paying him much mind. He had already taken his bag so he strolled towards the back of the plane. Carefully pulling his wand out of the bag as he walked. Finding what he was looking for, he pulled a lever, which caused the emergency door to fall, immediately a slide rolled down towards the floor.

Harry bypassed the slide, jumping down on the concrete. Eight men, wearing jackets similar to the two on the plane, with rifles pointed at his chest and face, met him.

He simply shrugged, looked around, thankful that at the spot he was in no one in the airport would be able to get a good look. He swished his wand and the round inside each barrel shot through the back. The lucky ones got it through the cranium, though there was one unfortunate that had lowered the rifle, and was now flopping on the ground holding his neck._ HA! Magic 1, muggle technology 0_

A commotion brought Harry out of his silent contemplation of his work. The old man had jumped off the plane. The two thugs were chasing him, grabbing at the back of his collar, when they saw the dead bodies of their comrades.

The old man took that opportunity to pull out the can of coke, which had been cut in two halves. Harry watched mesmerized as the old man slit both thugs throats with the sharp ends of each half.

As the old codger began his jog, he winked at Harry; none of the past senility present, and said "I owe you one".

Watching him run off, Harry shook his head before apparating away.

* * *

Walking up to the leaky cauldron, Harry couldn't help but notice the fear that dominated muggle London. Apparently, the murder of ten security guards in the airport was only the most recent of many tragedies, including the unexplained explosion of a British airways jet.

Many people were weary of terrorism.

He entered the bar, disappointed to find it much the same as it had always been; dark and gloomy. It was suspiciously empty for it to be near the end of summer, when it should be bustling with Hogwarts students and their families. There was something eerie in the atmosphere, and before Harry could put his finger on it, a floating dark cloaked figure put its wand to his temple.

Shocked that he had been taken by surprise, he went to draw his wand only to find some foreign magic holding him in place, nothing he couldn't break out of, but it would be nigh impossible for even a skilled wizard.

"State your business" Rasped the familiar voice of Mad-eye Moody. Harry paled, looking into the cloak, hoping to find the grizzled aurors mangled face, but the hood was pitch black, and Harry was pretty sure that the thing was floating in mid-air.

Feeling strong compulsive magic, he answered "I'm just taking a look around" He felt the magic scan him, probably for sincerity, and raised his oclumency shields, hoping that the magic would be fooled.

It didn't work, and after noticing the shields he felt a battering ram bash into the side of his skull. Not panicking, thankful that the magic prevented him from stumbling, he lowered them slightly and sent through his wishes to explore the alley. The magic evaluated them, thankfully not sophisticated enough to notice that he was hiding much more. Satisfied, it relinquished its hold on him.

Harry blinked twice upon seeing the leaky cauldron, full and bustling with chatting families. It had its usual dark and gloomy charm, but it was a ways away from the vision he'd been treated to just minutes before.

Embarrassed that he'd been duped by such illusions, he went and took a seat on a barstool. He was happy to see Tom the bartender approach him.

"What'll you be having?" He asked whilst cleaning out a mug with a ragged cloth.

"Ummm, I'd like a butterbeer" Tom returned with the drink seconds later. He looked at Harry and said:

"Not to interfere or anything, but you seem flustered Mr..." Tom said.

Harry looked up at him, quickly choosing what name he was going to go by from now on.

"Eustace Horowitz" Was his reply. He almost instantly wanted to clock himself in the jaw. He could have picked anything from Max Fightmaster to Duncan Steel, and he chose that.

"Aren't you a bit too young to be called Eustace?" Tom question.

'Eeerm, my friends call me... Ace" Said Harry lamely

"Riiiiight" Tom said with a raised brow. "Well Mr. Horowitz, what's got you so bothered?"

"Well, what's up with that thing at the entrance" Said Harry, making sure to not let Tom know he knew perfectly well what it was.

"Oh, you mean the security ward" He said with humor in his voice

"err, yes, that" Harry replied

"You're not from around here are you" It wasn't a question

"No, I'm a tourist, American" Harry said

"I figured you were, what with your accent" Tom said "I'm guessing you don't have anything like that in America" Harry shook his head. Tom chuckled lightly.

"Yeah well, no offense but your people don't know a thing about how it feels to be at war" He cleared his throat. The patrons were being served by a host of charmed objects.

"Ever since Madame Bones became minister, way back in 80, the ministry's been taking a much more active approach against you-know-who"

"That's one of the many safety measures we've got around here, don't hold up against his more experienced followers, but it keeps most of them out" Tom said "Hasn't been an attack on the alley in 12 years. Of course that ain't stopping you-know-who, he just attacks wizarding homes individually now. We lost many a good people that way, but its safer than it used to be" Said Tom neutrally. "Before Madame took office, people were running around panicking, Aurors were a disorganized lot" He paused "Now, now it's slightly better, people are better prepared, everyone's on their toes"

Walking to the brick entrance, Harry mulled over the information. It seemed this wizading world was better prepared for Voldemort than his own ever was. Looking at all the people walking around the alley, he saw that most of them had their wands stashed in places where they could pull the out quickly, though not many had holsters. There were aurors posted at many intervals, and everything seemed more organized.

Despite all this, Voldemort still struck fear in the hearts of many, as Tom had used "you-know-who". There was also the fact that there wasn't any boy-who-lived in this world, or he hadn't been marked yet, because Voldemort's reign had been uninterrupted.

As Harry reached the end of the alley, he was met with a dead end. What used to be the entrance to knockturn was now a slab of concrete.

"You need to know how to get in" Said a raspy voice. An old hag "The ministry thinks it can stamp us out, but we're a resilient bunch"

'Thinks it can block the entrance to our home, it does, but we're smarter than those buffoons" She said, looking at him with her one leery yellow eye that was intended to scare.

"Run along now you, the alley is no place for your kind" She hissed, raising her cane.

Harry rolled his eyes as the cane sprang to life and became a serpent. If the hag expected him to shit his pants she was sorely disappointed when he slashed his wand forward and the snake was turned inside out.

The hag's eye widened, she seemed to hold in a barf before she ran right through the solid brick wall.

Harry didn't follow, if the hag was their idea of a guardian Knockturn alley was just as worthless as it had previously been.

Returning to the now thinning crowd in diagon, Harry was met with a problem. Now that he'd reached England, now that he'd actually gotten here, he didn't know what to do.

Of course, there was much to do, he could fight Voldemort, begin his life anew, find out what happened to loved ones in this universe. He just didn't know where to start, he couldn't simply wait out here in the alley until someone he recognized came and he could say "Hey I knew you in another world, wanna give me something to do?"

Deciding to get some background knowledge before making a move, he'd go to the ministries archives to asses the current situation better. For tonight, he'd find a nice cave in which to sleep alone.

* * *

Harry yawned as he closed the Daily Prophet for June 13, 1995.

Researching this world's history had been tedious work. Security at the ministry was unbelievably tight, even at the time of day he had chosen to enter (late afternoon). He had actually been forced to use some of his best sneaking techniques to dodge the many security measures implemented.

What he had found hadn't been very enlightening. There was nothing at all about boy's-who-lived or prophecies, the dark lord hadn't even personally visited any family on Halloween 1980 (or any other day of that year, for that matter). Through the articles he could piece out that James Potter was head auror, but he wasn't important to get a mention of family or friends.

The only mention of Weasleys was in the obituaries, were Charlie Weasley was listed as having died just last year from wounds sustained after a dragon rampage. At Hogwarts there was nothing about tournaments, secret chambers or anything of the sort, unless you counted a recent Death Eater attack on Hogsmead weekend, which left four students dead.

Overall, there wasn't anything radically different, just that this ministry was partially competent. It had nothing specific on current hogwarts staff or particular death eaters.

Heading towards the atrium, being watched suspiciously by the many paintings, each of them having a small crater protruding from their frames, which they used for limited spellcasting. He had dropped any stealth once he had been well away from the archives.

As he joined the small queue to leave the ministry, a bored looking wizard with his wand holstered to his waist looked at him.

"I didn't see you come in Sir" He said with a tired expression. It was obvious he was required to say this.

"I've been here since morning sir" He decided to add "I'm researching the differences in cauldron thickness between northeaster and southeaster…"

"It's all right, it's all right, move along now" He said as he walked away quickly.

Putting up security measures was easy, enforcing them was the hard part. As Harry handed his wand to the man at the middle of the queue for inspection, he was surprised when a small slip of paper said "11 inches, holly, phoenix feather"

As the portly man handed him his wand, Harry looked at it transfixed. This couldn't possibly be his old wand. He hadn't seen it in years (It had been lost in the Himalayas, 13 years ago) but he was pretty sure that it wasn't a greenish color and it definitely didn't look like it had been plucked off a tree by a sedated gorilla.

"Would you hurry up you little shit!" Said a voice behind him. Harry growled, he was almost 38 years old for fucks sake, no one called him a little shit!

Turning around, he was chest to face with a short man. He had a trimmed white beard adjoined to unkempt white hair. He looked to be sixty, hardly that old for a wizard. He wore an eccentric orange bathrobe, bunny slippers and a fluffy sequined nightcap with a furry ball at the end.

"What, late for your eleven o'clock appointment with a four year old girl?" Was Harry's reply

"O ho ho ho, consider yourself a comedian do you boy" The pajama clad man chided "Well I've seen quite a few in my day, and your're almost as bad as Daneius the Cooker"

Harry didn't know a thing about history, he hated it in fact, but he was pretty sure that wizards stopped putting 'the' in the middle of their names centuries ago.

"well, you're definitely senile enough to qualify as an old fart" Harry said, starting to unsheathe his wand. He never could turn down a chance for a fight

'You're fixing for a lesson you little punk!" He said, brandishing his wand.

Before any of the aurors or security personnel could react, the old man had sent a nasty purple curse at Harry, whom barely jumped out of the way.

He didn't allow himself to be shocked by the gimps speed as he sent a powerful sonic boom in his direction.

The gimp conjured an elaborate shield, which held firm as the shockwaves cracked the stone walls of the ministry. Many of the portraits used this moment to shoot off blindly, sending stunning spells and binding hexes around the room.

Harry brought his wand down with force, cleaving the shield cleanly in half. The gimp simply flicked his wand once, and the shield halves were animated to rotate around him.

As he sent a powerful burst of poison, Harry ducked under a red spell, which changed route and followed him. Rolling to the side Harry was disconcerted when not only did it continued to pursue him, but another spell had joined it.

Getting a small glimpse of the old man, he saw that the poison hadn't even scratched the shield, and that he seemed content to watch as Harry tried escaping the balls of magic.

Getting annoyed, Harry sent a curse to collide with one of the red balls, which promptly dodged out of the way at the last moment. His curse instead collided with one of the stunning spells being sent by the portraits, which were wearing themselves out, and sadly beheaded a poor ministry official.

Harry took a gamble, hoping that the two masses of light were the type of seeking spells he though they were, and performed a mild blood-chilling curse on himself. The two curses stopped in mid-air for a second, before going for the warmest thing in the small radius, each other. Canceling the curse and trying to control his body's spasms of pain he grinned at the gimps shocked face.

Behind the man, ministry officials and many aurors, Harry couldn't see James Potter and he didn't care at the moment, were crowding around, wands at the ready. The gimp looked back and gave them a dark look, and they all shrunk, holstering their wands.

Harry was shocked to say the least, How did this chump have power over this (less) corrupt ministry?

" I see you're smart enough to have though they were heat-seeking spells, instead of magic-seekers" This wasn't said with much respect "I'd never thought that there was still some young punk competent at magic" He paused, contemplating him. "You would have made a wonderful role model for today's lazy youth, if you weren't about to die"

They exchanged opening volleys, the short man nimbly twisting around of spells that bypassed his rotating shields, not even moving his feet.

Harry had a rougher time, ducking and sliding out of the way of some nasty looking curses. When he was faced with one he couldn't dodge, he conjured a shield of marble. The spell was within inches of impacting the shield when it broke into dozens of smaller spells. Harry growled in frustration as he sped up his casting, conjuring small rocks to collide with all but one of the fragments, which striked him in the arm and made a small cut.

The man had already been casting, sending three large wooden stakes in his direction. Harry didn't even attempt using fire, instead a lengthy chain shot out of the end of his wand, which wrapped around one of the stakes. Harry swung in a circle, taking the heavy stake with him, and crashing it against the second stake, pulverizing both. Releasing the chain from the tip of his wand, it wrapped around the third stake and flew towards the man, who with one flick caused the chain to constrict the wood until it exploded.

Harry banished the shards of the now shattered stake towards the old man, getting to work on the heavy artillery.

Beginning to draw a rune in the air, Harry's work was paused when a huge suit of armor came out of nowhere, brandishing it's sword at him.

Harry had to erase the rune as the tip of the sword cut through the skin on his forehead. Looking at the soulless knight's eyes, he knew this was a variant of his gargoyle trick.

The man brought his wand to the floor, dozens of sinister looking roots springing from the spot were the wand had touched.

Harry blew a rough breath as he sent a blast of water to the floor, propelling himself upward. Some roots lashed up at him, while others made a platform for the knight to ascend on.

Harry cast a freezing charm on the water, standing on a slippery cliff. Knowing he didn't have much time before the vines shattered the ice he conjured a snake, a large constrictor with something protruding out of its stomach.

He let the snake fall on the knight, who sliced its head off with his sword. The headless body fell to the ground and laid in silence, until an infernal buzzing filled the room.

The crowd behind the old man watched in fear as hundreds of wasps burst out of the dead snake. They swarmed the knight, who tried striking one with his sword, only for it to be broken in half.

This had been one of Harry's inventions, having gotten the idea from his mother's protection. The conjured snake was pregnant with a horde of wasps. When anything killed the snake, the wasps would emerge and attack their mother's killer, who was unable to harm them because of their mother's sacrifice.

It had been a complicated piece of magic, especially with having to give the conjured creatures emotions for entirely different species. The gimp seemed to know this, as he helped the vines in trying to decimate the wasps, which had already dismantled the knight.

As they were distracted, Harry quickly wrote the rune, hoping that the huge tax on his magic would be worth it.

He thrust his wand forward through the middle of the rune, which glowed a bright orange before disappearing. Looking down, nothing seemed to have changed, but he knew from the crowd's panicked look that it had worked.

Their field of vision was now distorted, the previously clear picture now looking like it had been ripped to pieces and glued back together by a five year old.

Harry jumped from the ice tower, landing on his feet. He set some fiendfyre to take care of the writhing roots, and walked calmly up to the confused old man.

He was beginning to wonder why the old man had rubbed his eye for the fifth consecutive time before he received a punch to the jaw.

To his right was something that looked like the old man, only he was flitwick short, had a roundish body and for some reason a humped back. Harry froze as a rather green looking pudgy fist connected with his temple.

* * *

"…Obliviated them all I did, told Bones that if she didn't allow herself to be mind-wiped nicely, I'd have to do it rough" Said a voice

"Like you even could anymore" Came a second voice.

A yawn was heard in perfect harmony with a growl as the second voice, female, spoke

"well he's awake now anyways, ask whatever you're going to ask quickly, I haven't been off that couch in years and it feel uncomfortable to be in a chair"

"Maybe if you got some exercise you slag"

"Look who's talking Mr. Doesn't-walk-without-magical-slippers"

There was a grumble before the familiar voice said "Open your eyes you little brat"

Harry was considering his options when his eyes where forcibly slammed open. He felt his eyeballs burn from the immediate flow of light charging at them. He shook his head and sat up on what he found to be a very comfy if not funky-smelling couch.

Sitting in two chairs in front of him were his captors. To the right was the gimp, dressed just like he had been last night (_at least I hope it was last night). _Upon closer inspection, Harry could smell that he looked like he hadn't bathed in a while. To his left there was a woman, of similar age to the man, with graying hair tied in a messy bun. She looked like McGonagall, if McGonagall were slightly older and paid absolutely no mind to how she looked. She was wearing an old lady special, the wide nightgown with flower patterns, red sandals clashing with the green gown.

The room he was in looked like a normal living room, except for the obvious signs of neglect. There was a table in the background filled with half-full plates with food in various states of decomposition. The floor was littered with trash and old looking rolls of parchment.

Harry was about to open his mouth when the gimp spoke "You're at our house, in the middle of nowhere" He said with a gruff voice, which sounded strange coming from such a short man.

"This is my wife Perenelle, my name is Nicholas Flamel"

Harry wished he had been drinking something so that he could have spit it out, looking at the two of them, to think that this slob was Dumbledore mentor was ridiculous.

"I see you've heard of me" He said whilst his wife began removing the dead skin from her feet.

"Yeah, you're the one who made the philosophers stone" Was Harry's reply

"Oh please, I'm sure you know more than you're letting on" The man said in an attempt at a friendly voice, failed.

"ummm" Actually, Harry didn't know a thing about Flamel other than he was an alchemist.

"I guess you don't" He said, sounding disappointed "We'll let me get to the point, who taught you that magic, are you one of Albuses kids?"

The mention of a certain Headmaster seemed to perk Perenelle up "Oooh yes, are you one of Albies kids?" She asked excited "Such a strapping young lad, if only he hadn't turned out to be such a poof" Nicholas frowned at his wife's praise of Dumbledore

"Haven't seen the child in over a century, got mighty scared when I pushed his hand down my bra" She reminisced

"umm, no, I'm not anything of Albuses" She seemed to deflate at that

"But you know him, if you are on first name terms with the boy" Flamel said

Harry remained silent, wondering what he could tell these people. Nicholas, despite his six plus centuries of life, lost his patience quickly and sent a legilimency probe at Harry's mind. Harry tried protecting his mind, but stopping the probe was like catching water in an open palm, and very soon Harry found Flamel exiting his mind after finding out all he needed.

"I see, Mr. Potter" Perenelle's smile returned

"Charlus Potter?! Oh I remember when I threw one of my panties in your face, I never thought I'd see you or your wife again. How's Dorothea anyways? Still have that rash? Hows…"

"Charlus Potter died in sixteen-twenty-seven" Flamel said through gritted teeth

"Did he, oh my I better send my condolences to poor Thea, she must be pained" Perenelle said stricken

"Dorothea died in sixteen-nineteen" Said a now fuming Flamel

"Listen could you do this later" said an annoyed Harry, who decided he'd just get this over with now that Flamel knew everything about him.

"Yes, Mr. Potter" Nicholas Flamel straightened up "I see that you've been questing for knowledge, for power" He paused for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts

"No matter how many tribes or ancient temples you visit, nothing in this world compares to the magical education I could provide. Under my tutoring, in a few decades you could be the most powerful wizard in the past dozen centuries, without the need for any more unnecessary rituals" Harry couldn't believe it, just like that, Nicholas Flamel was offering him an apprenticeship!

"Y-you're gonna make me your apprentice, j-just like that?" Harry stuttered

"Of course not! You really think I'm charitable enough to help a weak little shit like you for no reason?" He said with malice

"What do you need me for?" Harry asked through gritted teeth

"I need you to help me-" Flamel looked at his wife "-us, die"


	4. Retractable Claws

Harry made sure to dig his pinky finger deep into his right ear, then the left one. He found nothing that hadn't been there before, but that only made him resume searching more thoroughly, using his fingernail to scrape the insides almost to the point of bleeding. Every single time he removed the pinky from his ears he got nothing but some dirt and skin. He looked at the offending appendage as if it had failed him.

"I'm sorry; I think I had some nargles in my ear. Could you repeat that?"

Without batting an eye at Harry's behavior, Flamel said. "I need you to assist me and my senile wife in our timely deaths"

Long pause.

"So should I just cast a few killing curses, or would you prefer I dropped an anvil on your head?" Harry asked, completely bewildered by Flamel's request.

"It is much more complicated than that, you insolent child!" Flamel said, swelling up with indignation like a person who was being indignant "If it was that simple I, the incomparable Nicholas Flamel, would have done it centuries ago"

Harry's brow furrowed in contemplation "How exactly could it be 'complicated'?" The light turned on in his head in seconds "Horcrux?" He threw out, no hint of revulsion at the term on his face.

Flamel closed his fist hard, the sound of his fossilized knuckles cracking a bit disturbing. His face was red surprisingly fast "How DARE you insinuate that I'd even consider utilizing such a brutish method to reach immortality"

His face turned back to it's usual paleness pretty quickly, which made Harry think that Flamel had somehow magically controlled the speed of the blood flow to his face; this sounded completely retarded but he didn't think it completely improvable considering who he was dealing with.

"Do you not know my history? My achievements?" He said in a softer, but still sort of menacing, tone.

"What would… the Philosopher's Stone?" Harry half-stated, half-asked confusedly.

"The Philosopher's Stone?" Flamel began in a mocking tone before going up a few decibels "Of course the Philosopher's Stone you fucking nitwit!" Somehow, Harry knew that Flamel had been waiting years to berate someone like he was preparing to berate him.

"But how is it complicated? If you stop taking it you should drop dead by Tuesday, shouldn't you?" Instead of being irrationally angry at Harry's lack of understanding, Flamel seemed to sag in his chair a little; Like magic, Harry saw the dark rings under his eyes, the wrinkled skin. The full weight of six hundred plus years had fallen on Nicholas Flamel in a single moment.

"Do you have any drink on you?" He asked.

"No" Was Harry's response.

Flamel sighed "Get ready for a long story"

There was a pause where Flamel collected his thoughts; the sudden silence didn't stop his wife from absentmindedly scraping the dead skin from her feet.

"By the time I was forty-two, I was at the top of the world of academia. I'd earned my mastery of most serious branches of magical study by then, and I'd begun to build myself a little alchemy lab. At the time alchemy was all the rage in the magical world; with the hundred year war and the black death, the muggles were doing a pretty good job of killing themselves, so we didn't really have that activity anymore, and so we turned to alchemy. It was very young when I began to study it, only a few decades old, and it was mostly cavalier gentlemen filling a cauldron with a bunch of random potions and flinging spells at it "

He got a faraway look in his face, and gave a hearty chuckle. "They said it was a passing fad, the elders did, it'd die out just like magical swords and flying mops; it did. By my forty-third birthday everybody had burned down their alchemy labs and gone on to the next popular thing" A gleam of pride entered his eyes "But I kept at it. Ignoring the protests of my wife, I kept my alchemy lab and continued my pursuit of fully developing the art" He grinned maniacally "And I did, it took me five years but I made a breakthrough, and then suddenly I started making discoveries left and right, shitting out inventions week after week. I was called the Miracle Man in the early days, finding answers to some of magic's most ancient questions."

"I was now also at the top of the public eye. It took them time to accept me, on account of my short stature and lack of musculature, but I opened my dirty mouth and they instantly fell in love with me. I was famous like you'd never believe, throughout the whole of Europe and even parts of Asia I was lauded for my greatness, rulers and kings showered me with gifts and invited me to the most exclusive fellowships"

He licked his lips and continued "By my ninety-seventh year, I was an established and respected lord, living in the lazy lap of luxury. I thought that I would be happy for eternity, until my ninety-ninth birthday, when my wife commented on how happy she was that we wouldn't be celebrating many more of them " He gave Perenelle a quick glance.

"That put a fire under me like nothing else, my mind still had millions of jewels to bestow upon the world, I couldn't deprive it of my glory! I began work on my greatest invention of all" He paused for effect "The Philosopher's Stone!" The memory of his success in creating the stone was giving Flamel a throbbing erection, apparently.

"It took the better part of three decades, but I'd finished it; my greatest invention! The object brought wonderment to the world, and it vaulted my from into a whole new stratosphere of fame. They dedicated chapters and later whole books to my accomplishments, something rarely seen before" Reminiscing about old times, another thing Nicholas Flamel seemed to have waited years to do.

"It was the greatest feeling ever, the first sip, I was rejuvenated, brought back to full working order. I discovered that not only did the stone secure our immortality, but it rejuvenated us. At a hundred and thirty I looked like a man of forty. There seemed to be no end to the stones magical properties, it even rejuvenated the long lost romance between my wife and I" Flamel shot Perenelle a look of slight longing before returning to his tale.

"In my infinite knowledge, I should have known that it was all too good to last, I should have researched more on the stones effects" His fingertips met his palm yet again as he steamed in self-hatred, something which Harry had thought impossible.

"It started out slowly, the warning signs were there but we just ignored them. We became more sluggish, like zombies, drinks from the elixir changed from once a week to twice a day" He sighed "One moment, you're making love to your wife thinking up some new invention to tickle your fancy, the next you realize you've been soaking in the bathtub for eight hours with drool coming out of your mouth"

Harry's moment of realization cut into the monologue "So the stone…"

"…Works like enough opium to make a mandrake stew itself? Yes" Flamel finished for him.

"Wow" Was all Harry could articulate

Flamel took another side look at Perenelle and his little hands twitched in his lap " She has taken it worse than I. I'm conscious enough to leave this house once every few decades to remind everyone I'm still alive and collect a few royalties and tributes here and there. She hasn't left this room in over two hundred years"

All of a sudden the room's appearance made a whole lot more sense.

"But, why has it taken you this long to ask for help? Surely there were some people in the past who could have assisted you"

Flamel gave a snort " My social schedule has been clear for centuries. The only people interested in me were purebloods who needed to earn some prestige for their family name and looked at me as an easy way to get it"

"But what about apprentices?" Harry was very curious about the answer to this question, as it would give him some good insight on a certain someone.

Flamel gave a snort that made his first one look like a sigh "The only apprentice I ever had was Albus, and I only took young Percival in because he was the nerd-of-the-month, and I needed to shut up the detractors who said I'd never done anything for the younger generation" Flamels small body turned red as a turnip at the thought of his detractors.

"Fucking idiots, the lot of them. Made me take a fucking nancy-boy into my home! Mind you, Wulfric was a brilliant study, but he was like some sort of faggot with his talk of respect and equality and the greater good, whatever that is" He looked at Harry and mistook his enraptured expression with one of shock.

"Yes, yes, I know. That vision of young Brian might be a little shocking, but it's true. I can appreciate how he plays the rubes of today's wizarding world for suckers, but he's too up his own ass with this 'subtleness' and 'manipulation' business. In my day, if a man wanted something done he'd burn down twelve villages and have it done by noon!" He grinned brashly at the memories of adventures he'd never had.

"So, back to what I can do to help you…" Harry said, realizing that that well had been dried.

"Oh, yes" Flamel straitened up, finally getting to the point. "In all these years under the power of my own substance, I've realized that there is only one exit" He puffed out his chest "The extraordinary Nicholas Flamel will NOT die by the tip of any wand, or the hand of any being, but by his own doing! Suicide is the least noble way possible for the noblest human being on the planet, and his wife, to make their exit"

"So…" Harry pushed him on, wanting to get to the fucking point.

"I will die in the most respectful way possible. An overdose"

The wheels in Harry's mind clicked immediately "I think I have you, you want to trade in your current addiction for another, equally crippling but less life-preserving; and you want me to provide it for you?"

Flamel smiled "There might be some hope in you yet, Harvey"

"Ok, so if I help you with this, you will apprentice me, correct?"

"Correct"

"But, what if you die during the apprenticeship, I doubt you'd want to become a ghost, and I don't want to be fucked over in this"

Flamel just grinned, the biggest, most genuine smile Harry'd seen from him "It takes more than a little huff to take Nicholas Flamel down, I'll be alive, but hopefully terminally ill, by the time the apprenticeship is over"

Harry wanted to bang his head on the ugly concrete next to him. He was currently near the exit of Knockturn alley, the smell of rotting sneazel carcasses being sold a few feet away

making his retreat even more brisk than it had previously been.

At first he'd thought that finding drugs would have been as easy as going to the apothecary and asking for some special potions. He quickly found out that it would be a bit more difficult than that.

Upon questioning, Flamel proved to know nothing of narcotics of any kind, wizard or muggle, outside of his outdated 16th century experiences with the muggle opium trade. Harry himself knew absolutely nothing about drugs, his childhood under a cupboard keeping him ignorant of most muggle vices. For the first time he'd looked back and found it shocking that in all his travels he'd never once encountered a magical plant or potion that could have psychoactive effects.

Combing Diagon alley, he'd discovered that not a single wizard knew what he was talking about when he mentioned drugs. Defeated, he'd decided that he'd have to make a last-ditch effort before venturing into muggle London, so he went to the end of Diagon, the entrance of Knockturn.

Even before he'd entered he'd know this place would give him a killer migraine. In his world-round-trip Harry had stayed in places that left much to be desired, places that could be considered hellholes, even places where a few dementors would actually brighten them up, but none elicited the negative feeling he got from this hellish strip.

Harry accredited it to the fact that it was such a black hole for the magical arts, full of half-assed torture devices and low-grade potions ingredients. Knockturn alley was more a slum where you could get a smelly three-legged niffler to cook for dinner than a bastion of the dark arts. Only Borgin & Burkes held any sort of respectability, and old Borgin made more of a living stashing the pureblood's suspect artifacts than anything else.

Of course, there was also the fact that three stupid teenagers had visited this place many years ago looking for things to help them on their quest, only to leave it grievously injured and one teenager short. Harry didn't consider this a reason for his current discomfort, It hadn't crossed his mind at all for the past few decades.

Passing in front of a notorious werewolf pub his body suddenly stiffened, every nerve ending in his body immediately turning to wood before beating with the power of a thousand drums. His eyes struggled with his control and succeeded in turning into semi-slits, his breathing became more and more frantic and his chest rose and fell at an accelerated rate. His ribcage was pounding, and his vision was blurring, but none of this compared to the adrenaline rave going on inside his head. It was like nothing he'd ever felt, and for a moment he was sure he'd rush into the pub and sate his newfound bloodlust.

He held firm, blinked twice, and the urge subsided slightly, enough for Harry to get a complete hold of himself, and continue his egress.

He was beginning to question what the hell had just happened when he saw something near the entrance that made him freeze in his tracks a second time.

Near entering the alley was a greasy head of hair.

Snape.

Severus Snape had single-handedly won the war against Voldemort. That wasn't really true, Dumbledore had won it, Snape had just followed his instructions to a T and finished off the chess game Dumbledore had figured out years ago. Snape had, with Dumbledore's coaching, been able to infiltrate the highest level of the death-eaters, crumbling the organization from the inside out, and giving Harry every single element he needed to kill Voldemort.

And Harry despised him.

Snape had in fact been the only reason Voldemort hadn't been displaying Harry's head on a pike after a few week's of effort on his part, but Snape was also an emotionally-stunted, greasy-haired and bitter man-child.

He'd been devoted to making sure Harry defeated Voldemort, Dumbledore had extracted an unbreakable bow out of him to make sure of it, but it wasn't because he cared for Harry's well-being, it wasn't because he secretly wanted to give little Harry a hug. In his twisted mind, Snape thought that saving Harry would somehow bring Lily Potter back to life, and that she would be more than prepared to love the only man in her life forever and ever till death do them part. He was so sure that this would happen he'd even dug up Lily's corpse a few months after her death and kept it under stasis in a secret room in his chambers.

Snape was an insurmountable jackass. He'd go out of his way to kill order members in the most gruesome of way's, during the second war he was considered to be nastier than even Bellatrix when it came to torture.

When Harry had finally raided Voldemorts fortress, he'd encountered Snape. Snape went on to explain in excruciating detail everything he'd done to assist Harry, including the keeping Lily's corpse part and a few other tidbits that haunted Harry's dreams for years to come. Snape had expected for Harry to kneel and proclaim him a hero, he hadn't expected a killing curse.

For all Harry knew, this Snape was a family man who regularly donated money to preserve the Snidget population, but he wouldn't take his chances.

Keeping his wand under his robes, he decided on slow strangulation. Casting the necessary curse, he was disconcerted when instead of his neck being constricted with the force of a few dozen pythons, Snape grew a three foot moustache of greasy hair to match the one on his head.

Snape's brow furrowed in confusion, he looked around for a second, and quickly escaped the way he had gone in.

Harry was too shocked to follow, and he looked down at his wand. Turning around to face a particularly crotchety old man, he repeated the same curse.

It worked to perfection, and Harry repeated the process on a few of the people scattered around the alley, making sure to use the exact same technique, wand movement and even the same tone of voice in his head as he silently threw around a half-dozen strangulation curses.

Frustrated, he guessed Snape had some sort of protection on him. It was the best theory he could come up with, but he'd never even heard of an object or protection spell that had that effect, and he very much doubted than Snape wanted to get a greasy moustache every time someone threw a threatening curse at him.

These things mulling in his head, he noted that they'd neutralized the alley's negative effect on him for only a moment, and he was already feeling the depression closing in. He made his exit.

Muggle London wasn't really his thing, all cramped and crowded, but it was infinitely better than the nauseating feeling of Knockturn. He was now searching for muggle drugs, armed with the knowledge he'd salvaged from the blurry memories of the gangster film he'd seen when visiting a mixed muggle/wizard village in the frozen part of Canada.

He'd already walked into a few pubs and found them to be too full and well-lit to be considered a hideout for an organized crime racket. Taking a detour into a dark alley, he'd conjured a gun, or something that looked like a gun, and stashed it on his waistband.

The pub he had just entered seemed to have the perfect mix of vague lighting and near-emptiness. Scanning the small enclosure, Harry realized he'd have to wing it from this moment on. Of the fourteen tables, five had people on them. Of those five, one had a single person sitting and drinking some yellow alcohol of sorts.

Harry walked confidently towards the circular table and sat opposite the man, who was staring at the bottom of his glass. Harry waited a few seconds but the man didn't seem to acknowledge his presence.

"What you drinking?" Harry asked conversationally.

The man, who was wearing a rather plain black suit and looked to be in his mid-thirties, fixed Harry with a hard stare.

"Apple juice" He finally replied.

"Oh… that's nice" The man was taking a sip of his juice and Harry decided to just jump straight in "So where can I score some drugs?"

The stranger snorted into the glass. Setting it down with a hard thud and ignoring the trickle of juice that was running down his cheek, he exclaimed in a loud whisper:

"Are you daft or something?!" He wiped his face with his sleeve without taking his eyes off Harry.

Harry knew he had messed up badly, so he quickly went to plan B. A knife of legilimency cut in through the mans eyes, out back through the corneas, and straight to…

_**YOU HAVE BEEN CAUGHT ATTEMPTING TO USE A LEGILIMENS SPELL WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF DIAGON ALLEY!**_

Harry jumped in his chair, he quickly cooled himself down as the disembodied voice's assault continued.

_**LOCATION OF ATTEMPT: OUTSKIRTS OF WARDED AREA, MUGGLE LONDON.**_

_**THIS SPELL HAS BEEN ATTEMPTED ON A MUGGLE, WHICH CARRIES A MINOR INFRACTION OF SEVENTEEN SICKLES. THE FINE MUST BE PAYED WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AT THE FRONT OFFICE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT.**_

Harry held his head in his had as both his brain and heart seemed to want to abandon ship and his ears rang loudly. As he felt a slight burning in his palm, he looked only to find a message branded into the skin, like the after effects of Dolores Umbridge's blood quill, which read _17 sickles. 23 h, 59 m, 55 s _with the last number counting down every one thousandth millisecond.

"WHAT? Now you're being a spastic?" The man's voice brought Harry back to reality. Looking up at the man, who had stood up off his chair, Harry collected himself as best as he could.

"Listen, I need to purchase some drugs" Harry decided that the cherry on the Sunday would be him flashing his rough approximation of a firearm.

That was the worst idea he could have ever had, and in a flash there were nine knives pointed at his face and neck. All of the bars previously innocuous patrons now stared threateningly at him. One of them took the gun from his wasitband and threw it under a table to the far right.

"How in the fuck did you sneak a gun into British soil?" Asked the man he had shared a table with. All around him the patrons of the bar were steadily holding their knives in a circle around him. _At least I know they're gangsters._ With imperceptible movement, Harry already had his wand ready to pull out before any of them even thought about securing his hands. Before calling it a failure, Harry would see if negotiation could still work.

"'What's the problem? Can't a guy make an honest drug deal now a days?"

The men found no humor in that, and the apple juice guy spoke in a quietly enraged voice:

"You're apparently ingenious enough to sneak a firearm into Britain, yet you barge in here asking for drugs like you're a kid at a candy store. What are you playing at?"

Any answer Harry could have had was cut short by a weirdly familiar voice:

"What's all the ruckus about?" It came from behind, the pub's entrance. Harry swiveled around, without his skin meeting the tip of any blades, to see who this newcomer was.

An ugly crooked-toothed smile, egg-shaped head and big round glasses announced the entrance of the guy from the plane, something Bridges.

A young fat man spoke up " This guy's been acting like a right mong, and he brought a gun!"

Something Bridges paled at the mention of a weapon and looked straight at Harry with a contemplating look. Harry didn't know if it could be compared to the look he got as a Jaguar when he tried to discern everything he could about a possible prey, he didn't know because the look didn't last long enough.

It took Bridges only seconds to recognize Harry, and he showed his crocodile's maw with a gigantic grin.

"Mr. Sexton, I've been expecting you" He pulled out a chair in a tabled to his left and said like unto an old friend "Please, have a seat"

His cronies had become very confused "But boss…" pleaded the fat guy

"Leave us alone, me and my dear friend here need to discuss business" Harry didn't know how these guys could follow orders from such a goofy looking man.

They still stood in a circle around Harry, though they now held the knives limply at their sides.

"But boss, he had a fucking gun!" Yelled one with blue eyes.

"Oh really, where is it now?" asked Bridges

"Over there" Said another, pointing to the table that the gun had been thrown under

"What are you waiting for, go pick it up!" The crony rushed to the table and came back with the gun as quickly as he could. He handed it over to Bridges, who held it up in the light for all to see. Ten people's face reddened in embarrassment. The thugs because they had been duped so easily, and Harry because of his shitty transfiguration work (was it his fault that he'd seen a gun maybe twice in his life?).

"And you talk about fucking spastics! Cant even recognize a bleeding gun!" Bridges was barking at his subordinates. "Don't you have a small business owner to extort?" Almost at once, all nine men left in a single file, going out through the front door without a word leaving their mouths.

"Get me some scotch, will you lad?" Bridges said to the barkeep, who nodded his head and went to cleaning a shot glass as Harry and Bridges sat down. Harry had released his grip from the wand in his pocket.

"I must say Mr. Sexton, I'd hoped you'd lie low a little longer before venturing into my neck of the woods, but I should have expected no less from a man of your caliber; that trick with the fake gun was just top-notch stuff" The barkeep put two shot glasses and a single bottle of scotch on the table. "Thanks Norman, why don't you take the rest of the day off?"

Recognizing the dismissal, the barkeeper gathered his things from behind the counter and left.

Harry watched the barkeeper collect his things while Bridges was filling his shot glass. "Please, have some scotch" Bridges said, filling Harry's glass.

"No, it's all right. I need to be completely alert today" The truth was the headache from the botched legilimens spell still stung in his head, and Harry doubted drinking it away would help in the long run. He was already feeling a second pounding just by smelling the drink with his enhanced senses, dulled as they were.

"Yes, I guess a man should be completely aware with the law hounding him" Bridges took a sip of his scotch " Shouldn't he, Ace?" Bridges smiled like he had triumphed over Chris Antley.

Harry didn't know how to react, so he didn't.

"Always with a poker face, eh Eustace? Of course it doesn't surprise you that I found out as much as I could about your life" He filled his shot glass and took a swig "Like how you were found in the bushes of a Vietnamese battlefield, raised by the American military under the parentage of an old Jujitsu master. Officially joined the military at age fifteen, by eighteen had already gone on over a dozen successful covert missions and staged three coups. By twenty-one you were only dispatched on critical situations and the most difficult of missions. You were dishonorably discharged and faced with three life sentences after being discovered to have helped fund a notorious American crime family. You were detained at Alcatraz island until your trial, but you escaped on the first night of your detainment; you proved why they called you the "man of a thousand faces" as you were able to assume the life of one William Melvin Sexton, a middle-class accountant whom you have been perfectly masquerading as for the past ten years."

"Yep, I did pretty much everything you just said I did" was Harry's only reply, he wasn't very good at lying.

"Now, I assume you came to collect the debt I owe you, so what can I do you for?"

"I need drugs" Harry said bluntly

"Drugs?" Bridges asked, looking disappointed.

"Yeah, loads of them." Harry trot on

"But… don't you need weapons to arm a revolution? Money to build a laser beam?" He asked hopefully

"No…Just drugs" Bridges sighed disappointedly

"Well, I'm a man of my word. What type of drugs?" Harry really wished he could use legilimency right now.

"The best you have" Bridges scrunched his face up and contemplated Harry.

"So it'll be heroin?"

"Yeah"

"How much?" Harry was drawing a blank on exactly how much heroin would be considered a lot, so he decided to play it safe.

"A busload" Bridges chocked on his scotch and his glasses fell off his face

"A BUSLOAD!? Now see here, I owe you my life and everything but a truckload is six months worth of product" He loosened his collar to give his reddening face breathing room "I'd be hanged if I gave all that up"

A frown set in Harry's features. He wouldn't dare attempt an imperious curse after what happened to the legilimency probe. He was set to just burn up the bar in frustration and call it a day, but he restrained himself, Bridges hadn't done anything to deserve a childish tantrum. He kept a hard grip on his wand, though, and sparks were flying off the tip.

"Unless…you provide me with an acceptable payment…" Bridges trailed off, looking at Harry.

Harry hadn't been in this new England a week and he'd already run into money problems.

After leaving Bridge's pub, Harry had apparated to the Flamel's home, looking for some explanations and money. Nicholas had explained that he hadn't known anything about the measures the ministry had taken, and that he was probably exempt from them anyways. His answer to Harry's plea for money to pay up the ministry debt had been a big N-O (if you substitute "a big" with "fuck you, you broke little miscreant, fuck").

Seventeen sickles was the least of his worries; Bridges had required an amount of fifty thousand pounds, which was a fraction of the true cost but still very much. He'd been further frustrated when, in a second visit to the ministry, he'd looked up laws erected within the past two decades. Besides the legilimency block in most areas with high concentrations of magic, there had also been a taboo on all three unforgivables, which covered all the British Isles, Dementors hadn't been used in Azkaban for years and suspected dark wizards where regularly subjected to intrusive probes on their personal life, to Harry it was a minor miracle that Knockturn was still standing.

Of course, this regimen shared the same apathy for dark creatures that his worlds had had, for the most part Harry felt this was an injustice, but for some reason he couldn't muster up the same feelings of sympathy for werewolves that he used to have. He didn't understand the reason, but subconsciously he'd become irritated, even hostile, when thinking about or discussing werewolves with the many peoples he had encountered. Ten years ago, he'd met an old werewolf who led a secluded Romanian sect that studied the moons magical properties, and he hadn't felt any irrational hate towards him. In the years following that he'd irregularly encountered werewolves to varying results; Harry knew that there was a specific moment in the past ten years when he had suddenly developed an apathy for Lycanthropes, but he couldn't remember when.

Harry pulled himself out of his thoughts as the queue ended. The office he was currently in was a sterile blue color, with nothing but decrees and regulations staring at him from either wall. Behind him, a good couple dozen wizards waited irritably for him to finish his business.

"Hand" said the bored lady. She looked rather young , probably just starting her career, and fairly attractive. She vaguely resembled someone, but Harry drew a blank at trying to identify her. She had long honey brown hair and brown eyes, and had a slight bookworm-ish look about her, he thought that it was most probable she'd been in Ravenclaw at school, least probably Gryffindor. He sometimes played this mental "what house where they most probably in?" game and he'd never been wrong.

While he'd been inside his head, she'd read his palm, which had the timer at _2 h, 34 m, 44s. _"That'll be seventeen sickles" She said. Harry reached into his pocket, these had been easy to obtain. The ministry might have been slightly more competent than Harry's own, but they still couldn't stop some good old fashioned disisllusioment and confundus charm assisted pick pocketing. The real challenge would be getting fifty thousand pounds by thursday. A quick review of the laws showed what he already suspected, the ministry had put the same anti-counterfeit charms on muggle currency that they had on wizard money. Not because they cared one bit about the muggle economy, they just didn't want wizards to leave the wizarding community for the easy life that could be had in the muggle world.

He gave her the coins and she put them in a jar. She wrote something in a large book and the writing in Harry's palm blew into an invisible wind. The girl didn't even look up from her book and Harry guessed he was dismissed, but a thought permeated his mind.

He was stuck in this new world, he didn't know anything but the most basic outline of it's history. He didn't know if his parents were alive, if his friends were alive, if he was alive. This girl obviously had some link to his time pre-Voldemort's death, however thin it probably was. He'd need to slowly get introduced into this world, and this seemed like the perfect place to start.

"Thank you miss…" Harry trailed off

She looked up at him irritably and pointed at the plaque on her desk, as the people in the back of the line started getting grumpy. It read:

_Penelope Clearwater_

_Secretary/Bookkeeper_

The name brought some more faint familiarity. It bobbled around in his head for a while until the answer exploded into his brain: Penelope Clearwater, Percy Weasley's old girlfriend!

Penelope cleared her throat and Harry smiled down at her.

"Well Miss Clearwater, you seem kinda bored, mind if I take you out for a drink?" Harry asked.

"Sir, aren't you a little bit too old to be hitting on me so blatantly?" Harry hurriedly did the math in his head. She should be around twenty two, thirty-seven divided by two plus seven was 25.5, close enough.

"I'm just trying to be sociable Miss" Harry hoped he didn't come across as creepy as he felt. The people behind him were getting murderous, but he'd hold his own, there wouldn't be a chance of a repeat of the Flamel deal. "You seem to be pretty miserable here and I'm thinking we could have some good clean fun" if not for his good looks, she'd have already slapped him for being a creepy old guy.

The people in the line where ready to get rowdy but they were easily subdued by a powerful calming charm discretely sent out from Harry's wand.

"Listen mister, if you don't move this line along I'll be forced to call the aurors, they're on this floor you know"

"Hey, hey, no need to get the aurors on this; its just, I know Percy and…"

"You knew Percy?!" She asked, suddenly exited.

"Yeah, was there moments before he died" He was going to ride this out till the end. If he had to capitalize of stupid cunt Percy Weasley's death to get a connection this world, then so be it.

"You know how he died? Why didn't you come to the department after the report of his disappearance?" She was getting a fiery look on her face, at that moment Harry was sure even the dullest of women got that look at least once. He realized he shouldn't have jumped in so blindly.

"He got an unbreakable bow out of me, nothing I could do" She deflated immediately, proof that she wasn't built to be a firecracker (which was ok with him). Tears were rolling down her face, unnoticed by the sedated file behind Harry.

"I-I, I thought we were gonna get married, once" She wiped her tears away with her shirt sleeve.

"But then he started getting distant, not talking to me or his family for weeks on end and locking himself in his room. But before I could confront him about it, h-he disappeared" She needed a shoulder to cry on, Harry wasn't sensible enough to realize that shoulder should have been his.

"Well, I could talk to you about Percy, maybe, next Friday?"

"Where?" She said, blowing her nose

"Florean Frostecutes, noon" It sounded like an innocent enough time and place.

"Ok" She gave a weak smile.

Harry went to leave, when he remembered something and turned around. "By the way, the names John Snowden".

It was Wednesday and Harry needed to get some muggle money. Currently he was in Cardiff, Wales; far from any wizarding hotspot. It hadn't been hard getting here once he'd been able to leave London and get a basic map of this general area from the minds of random people (he hit pay dirt when he found a Welsh guy).

He'd never been to a muggle bank before, but he had enough indirect knowledge of them to get a good idea of what the best course of action was. It helped that it was the dead of night and the bank was completely empty, he wouldn't need to worry about people or mixing magic with electronics.

Harry was disillusioned just in case, and he apparated into the bank. The inside was very still, and Harry was sure there wasn't a single cockroach in the building. Everything permeated a scent of fresh, and it felt like the air conditioner was on. Harry apparated trough the glass that separated the tellers from the lobby. To the far left of the line of teller posts was a plain wooden door. Opening it set off an alarm. Harry was quick to _silencio _the alarm, though that didn't stop the police and fire department from receiving a notice.

He walked through the door. There was a well carpeted, long and narrow hallway with a big door to the right side at the half-point mark of the hallway. At the end of the hallway was a circular vault door that looked eerily like what he remembered of the ones at Gringott. He walked up to the vault and incanted a simple _alohomora_, which, to Harry's surprise, didn't work. Short of temper, Harry concentrated heavily and incanted the most powerful unlocking spell he knew; the door flew open and smashed against the wall, cracking it and creating some rubble. Harry stepped over the vault door to find many smaller safes, set up like drawers. He guessed that there were probably thousands. He went to touch the handle of one but thought better of it, sensing magic at play.

Whipping out his wand, Harry did some much missed ward searching, and in a few seconds he'd already finished. It was a very simple trigger, it'd give him a shock and send a warning to somebody else. It was extremely simple to circumvent, but Harry found curiosity getting the best of him. If the ministry had wanted to protect muggle banks, they'd have surely done something better than this. Making a quick decision Harry touched the handle and ignored the shock that failed in its attempt to run through his spine.

It took some time, but pops of apparition came. In the middle of the room, in their lime green boxers and t-shirts, looking confused, stood Fred and George Weasley.

Harry's mouth was agape. He'd encountered people from his universe, sure, but none that'd he'd actually known that well, none that he'd shared great times with, none that he'd seen die. There were a host of emotions trying to escape him, but Harry ruthlessly crushed them down into himself. He didn't know why he sought to socialize with Penelope yet wanted these two to disappear, and he didn't care at the moment.

"Hey, mate, what'cha doin here?" asked either George or Fred

"Yeah the contest isn't till tomorrow" said either Fred or George.

"Unless, but you couldn't possibly…"Said one, melodramatically putting his hand to his mouth.

"What is it dear brother?! SPEAK!" Said the other in a mock tone

"Why…I believe our dear fellow here might be trying to CHEAT!!" The other gave a loud gasp.

"Listen, I don't know what you're on about, but I'm just trying to make a living here" The words came out slightly raspy, and Harry cursed himself for being such a Gaylord.

Fred and George looked at him with confused expressions.

"You know… you sort of resemble…" Began one, but the other cut in to more pressing matters.

"So wait, you're ACTUALLY going to steal from this muggle bank?"

"Yes" Harry replied.

"But, you're a wizard aren't you? Why would you want this Muggle crap?" Asked one.

"Aren't you two wizards? You seem to care enough about this shit to put security wards over it " Harry had figured out which one was Fred and which one was George, on account of the waistband of their boxers saying their names. The one that had the Fred boxers was George.

"Yes my good man but we don't use this for monetary gain…" Fred began , his good natured melodramatics returning.

"…We do it for the love of the sport!" George finished.

"Sport?" Harry asked confused. He wanted to think that Fred and George's antics were annoying, but their mischievous grins brought a wave of nostalgia over him.

"Why don't we give the man an explanation, George?" Fred said with a huge grin.

"You see sir, my brother and I have always been what most would call 'visionaries'. We've been on the cutting edge of new wizarding technology since our third year at Hogwarts, when we invented the portrait cannon to fuel the war between The Fat Lady and Sir Cardogan…"

"….Up to a few months ago when we made the ever impressive wand magnifier" Fred whipped out a miniature horn from a somewhere (Harry didn't want to put much thought to it). He attached it to the tip of his wand and cast a stunning spell at the door through which Harry had come in. A beam of red light the size of a beach ball erupted from Fred's wand and blew the door to pieces.

" Yes, thanks for that completely unnecessary demonstration Frederick." George said. Harry was amazed at the twins work .

"Anyways" George continued "We are very much luminaries and distinguished gentlemen, but sometimes great wizards of times past set the stage for our great accomplishments"

"The great Merlin, kidnapped a muggle princess and forced her to marry him at wandpoint" Fred began.

"Godric Gryffindor, stole Gryffindor's sword from the goblins who made it." They were ticking off an imaginary list.

"Barnacles The Barmy, used his vast troll army to destroy poor muggle villages so that he could take their tasty gruel"

"Nicholas Flamel, stole some painting from a museum in Paris and planted a fake on some poor Italian bloke"

"I think I get the point" Harry said. He got an obscene amount of comfort from these hi jinks that brought back memories of times past. He was so caught up that he ignored the distant sounds of a siren.

"So, we realized that we needed to continue on the distinguished wizard tradition of stealing from others, mainly muggles, just because we can; and that's how the noble sport of smuggling began" Fred said with a glint of pride in his eyes.

"You see, each month we choose a different muggle bank, fortress or museum…"

"…The purpose is to rob that place blind whilst using the most simple magic in the least amount possible…"

"…The person who manages to steal whatever is being guarded in the least amount of steps, without being found out by the muggles and with as much style as possible wins"

"So" They said in unison "First match of the season is tomorrow morning right here, you can still sign up. Winner gets this custom made chocolate frog card" Fred held up a crude drawing of both twins, which was struggling to make it's sluggish movements.

The not so distant sound of multiple footsteps brought Harry out of his trance. He swept his wand over the shelves, which shrunk and merged into one tiny steel drawer.

"The muggle lawmen are coming, I suggest you leave" Harry said

"Hey wait a minute there mate, if you don't take it during the match then you're just plain stealing from muggles" Fred and George's weird moral code manifested itself and they drew their wands, Harry stunned them both in the blink of an eye.

He went to apparate but stopped abruptly. He walked up to Fred and reached into his boxers, wanting to retch in disgust. He found the little cone shaped enhancer in a secret pocket and took it.

He should have helped Fred and George, apparated them away with him, but he left them there unconscious to be found by a bunch of police men, in their boxers.

Taure: Actually, I didn't think of that Futurama episode once whilst writing the first chapter, though I can definitely see the similarities.


End file.
